PowerPoint Lesson 1: Slide Layouts and the Slide Master

📎 This article includes 1 downloadable practice file ↓

⏱ 3 min read

📘 PowerPoint Beginner Course · Lesson 1 of 8

In this article
  1. Layouts: the right starting point
  2. The Slide Master
  3. Reset slides that drifted
  4. Build a company template
  5. Slide size
  6. Where beginners go wrong
  7. Practice

Changing the font on 30 slides one by one, or nudging a logo into the same corner on each, is a sign the deck isn’t using the Slide Master. Learn it once and every deck you make looks consistent with a fraction of the effort.

Layouts: the right starting point

Home › New Slide offers layouts: Title Slide, Title and Content, Two Content, Comparison, Section Header, Title Only, Blank. Each has placeholders, the dotted boxes that say “Click to add text”. Use them instead of drawing text boxes:

  • Text in placeholders follows the theme fonts and sizes.
  • Titles in title placeholders show up in Outline view, navigation and accessibility tools.
  • Change a slide’s layout any time: Home › Layout.

The Slide Master

View › Slide Master. The big slide at the top is the master; the smaller ones beneath are layouts that inherit from it.

  • Change the title font and colour on the master: every layout and every slide follows.
  • Put the logo on the master: it appears everywhere. Put it on a single layout to show it only there.
  • Set footer text and slide numbers here, then turn them on with Insert › Header & Footer.

Close with Close Master View.

💡 Set theme fonts and colours with Slide Master › Fonts / Colors › Customize. Then “Theme Colors” appear in every colour picker, and charts and SmartArt use them automatically.

Reset slides that drifted

A slide someone formatted by hand ignores master changes. Select it and click Home › Reset: its placeholders snap back to the layout’s position and formatting (your text stays).

Build a company template

  1. Set fonts, colours, logo and footer in the master.
  2. Delete layouts you’ll never use; rename the rest clearly (right-click › Rename Layout).
  3. File › Save As › PowerPoint Template (*.potx).
  4. New decks: File › New › Personal.

    5. Slide size

    Design › Slide Size: Widescreen 16:9 suits screens and projectors today. Change it before building content; changing later rescales everything.

    Where beginners go wrong

    Habit Problem
    Blank layout + text boxes for everything No consistency; titles missing for navigation
    Logo pasted on each slide Slightly different positions; edits ×30
    Fonts changed slide by slide Mismatched decks; use the master
    Copying slides from other decks with “Keep Source Formatting” Imports foreign layouts; use “Use Destination Theme”

    More: PowerPoint Slide Master guide.

    Practice

    Download the practice deck below. It is a short “Chennai expansion” pitch to fix using the master and layouts. The first slide lists your tasks.

    📎 Practice files for this article

    • 📙
      Lesson 1 practice deckThe Chennai pitch deck: set up the master, logo and layouts.
      ⬇ PPTX · 39 KB

    Free to use for learning. Files with macros (.bas) are plain text — import them with Alt+F11 → File → Import File, and always test on a copy.

    Keep reading

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